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Music Review: Wiz Khalifa – Rolling Papers (2011)

The closer and closer we got to the release date for Rolling Papers, the less and less excited I got. The first single from this album, “Black and Yellow”, is an awesome song and a great example of how a rapper can go pop without completely selling out his style. Everything I heard after that song (specifically “Roll Up”) was a great example of how to completely change your style for the worse just in an attempt to go pop.

While this album as a whole doesn’t really sound like the singles, unfortunately it’s closer to “Roll Up” than “Black and Yellow”. In fact, “Black and Yellow” feels completely out of place on Rolling Papers. There’s a lot of relaxed melodic singing/rapping on this album that I think works wonderfully on an album like Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon; it doesn’t really work on this.

Khalifa’s rapping and subject matter throughout the album just bored me. There was little variation from song to song and most of the tracks on this album sound exactly like the one that came before it. Usually I want features on a rap album kept to a minimum but here I was wishing for more. The best song on this album is probably “Rooftops” which is one of the very few tracks that features another rapper (longtime Wiz collaborator Curren$y).

The production doesn’t really stand out either so this album as a whole is just “meh”. I think this will probably please hardcore “Taylor Gang or die!” Wiz fans but for just about everyone else this album is really easy to skip.Score: 4.0/10